


Love is an action

by withaflashoflove



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-18 15:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9390293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withaflashoflove/pseuds/withaflashoflove
Summary: Canon divergent; set during 3x02. After Barry runs out of the cortex, she leaves STAR Labs before he has a chance to come back. Iris's POV.





	

She hasn’t spoken to him for a month.

It’s not like she didn’t miss him. She does. But she’s angry. She’s furious. In ways she didn’t think she could be mad at _him_. 

More so than when she discovered he didn’t tell her he was The Flash. More so than when she realized he’d told everyone else except her, including her dad and her boyfriend, told them, choosing to share that information with them, leaving her to figure it out on her own.

But that anger, she internalized. She blew up at him a few times, then imploded, reclused, recoiled. Really, it was for his sake more than hers, because she still cared about him, cared about not hurting him the way she’d been hurt. It’d be a different pain, but it was still pain, and she protected him from feeling pain; that’s what she did. That’s what she’s always done. 

Protected his heart. From his own feelings. From her feelings, feelings she didn’t understand. From himself. From the world.

So she forgave him. She forgave him for not telling her, and then for pushing her away. She forgave when he doubted her, saying she couldn't understand like she had never had to put an effort into understanding him. She forgave when he told her she shouldn't have spoken to his girlfriend when she was the one reaching out, when she ignored all of her feeling to give someone else advice on how to deal with Barry Allen. She forgave him for doing things no best friend should do without ever hearing _I'm_ _sorry_ out of his lips.

She let those things go, because that’s what she did. Because she loved him when he didn’t deserve to be loved, and thoughts like this normally didn’t cross her head, she didn’t keep a headcount of how many times Barry fucked up, just like he didn’t keep a headcount of how many times she did. That wasn’t how _friendship_ worked. But this was now, and now she was hurting and confused and heartbroken because she couldn’t remember a life she apparently had, but Barry remembered all of it but not the life she was living, the life that she knew. He knew an Iris that Iris herself didn’t know could ever exist. He didn’t know the one she had always been. 

That was partly why she wasn’t talking to him. But also because she hadn’t truly forgiven yet.

For the past year, she had been dealing with the prospects of a mom she didn’t really have, a mom who never belonged to her. She hadn’t spoken to her dad for almost a year, hadn’t stepped foot in his house because repeatedly, time and time again, her dad stopped her from knowing things she should’ve known, from being things she could’ve been.

She could’ve been a police officer, but her dad swore he wouldn’t talk to her again if she pursued it, and Iris didn’t want to lose him, loved him too much to put her ambitions before his feelings.

She could’ve helped Barry, could’ve worked side by side with the hero of Central City, but her dad didn’t want her to know, somehow thought that not knowing was safer than knowing, that the truth was more dangerous than a lie. It felt like added insult given she became a journalist, an investigative reporter, someone who sought after the truth only to have the truth stripped from her without her consent, without her knowledge.

And Iris trusted. So she didn’t doubt. She didn’t doubt her dad. She didn’t doubt her best friend. She trusted them because that’s what she did, that’s what you do for people you’ve grown up with, for _family_ who’ve never given you a reason to not believe.

But then Joe told her her mother was alive. How could she forgive that?

How could she forgive him for stopping her from seeking out her mother, from making that decision, from choosing to be Francine’s _daughter_ if she wanted to be. 

Her anger exploded, the anger that had been accumulating for a year, from all the secrets and lies.

She spent a year alone. A year without a home because her dad’s house wasn’t her own, because the safety and warmth she felt when she was there shattered in a moment of honesty, and it felt ironic. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.

So when Barry told her that the Iris _he knew_ had forgiven, she couldn’t rationalize what caused the difference, what other changes happened in her life to make her forgive instead of leave, what made her swallow the hurt instead of feel it.

Moments that apparently happened, _didn’t._

Like Iris telling Joe about Wally, and both of them meeting Wally at their _home,_ together like a family, with Barry, because they were all a family.

Instead, she told Joe because she couldn’t do to him what he did to her. She met Wally with Francine, at the hospital, without her dad. She developed a trying relationship with him, one where they both mourned their parents, him his mom and her her dad.

Francine lived. Iris forgave her for leaving. They talked from time to time. Because if Iris didn’t have her dad, so she tried to keep her mom. And she didn’t know if she did it because she missed a mother that had been denied from her, or because she needed _someone_ , anyone to make the lonely nights a little less lonely, to give her reason to keep at it, to give her reason to push herself to forgive her dad the way she was forgiving her mom, to accept his mistakes the way she was accepting Wally’s. 

This was the life she had lived. 

This was the life she knew, the life that Barry didn’t know because Barry didn’t remember, the life that every conversation that happened with the Barry _she knew_ never happened, not to him, but conversations _he knew_ did happen, not to her.

It was frustrating.

And Iris drove herself to tears trying to understand it, left the tears to fall off her cheeks alone in nights she spent at her apartment, without anyone else because people hurt and memories that weren’t her memories and this life that didn’t feel like her own, as if she wasn’t in control of who she was, of what she remembered, of who she used to know.

How was she supposed to forgive?

The day she confronted him about why he was acting so strange, why he was trying so hard to do things she had told him to _stop_ _doing_ , he ran away from her. When she told him _if_ _you lie to me, this cannot happen_ , he ran away. He left her alone, so she ran too. 

He wasn’t the only one who had that right. She loved him.

She put their relationship on the line, a chance to mend old wounds, a chance at a new start because Iris would forgive him if he’d tell her the truth, if he had learned to stop running from her and start running towards her, to trust her embrace instead of chase after something better. 

And he ran. 

He found her later that night, on the balcony of her apartment. He told her everything. 

Iris listened. It felt like people were always giving her reasons to use her ears rather than her mouth, were always doing things that needed explanation, and she couldn’t fathom why they didn’t trust her, why she didn’t warrant that trust, so she listened, she compartmentalized, she tried to understand.

She told him she needed time. 

It’s been a month since she’s spoken to him. Funny how time flies when it becomes routine.

When it becomes wake up. Go to work. Come home. Remember to eat. Think. Cry. Sleep.

When it becomes go to sleep. Get out of bed. Learn to leave behind any feelings to survive the day. Go to work. Come home to an empty house. A house too small to fit all the anger inside it. A house too large to engulf all the loneliness. Think. Try not to cry. 

She didn’t talk to her dad if it wasn’t about work. She didn’t talk to Barry if it wasn’t about work. She lived at CCPN if she could, avoided coming home till late, because home meant heartache, home, which usually meant shelter, became heartbreak, and Iris had a hard time wanting to go home.

She missed her mom. 

She missed her dad.

She missed her brother.

She missed her best friend.

It was love.

That was the only reason for it, the only reason it could hurt this much. It was love.

She missed him. She wanted to hold him, to hug him, to cry into his chest as much as she wanted to yell at him, to curse him for making things so _hard_ between them when nothing needed to be this hard.

So she settled instead for staying alone, for avoiding people who were close to her because she didn’t want to hurt them and she didn’t want them to hurt her.

Except Wally. 

Who visited her one night, the first time he came to her apartment in a while.

Iris had been distancing him too, and she figured he caught onto it, only making time to see him in CCPN, sometimes going to visit him at college, sometimes calling him on her lunch break, but never too close to physically touching him, to getting too attached, maybe for her sake as much as his.

But tonight he knocked on the door, after telling her he needed to talk to her.

And now she was crying into his chest and he was holding her tight, and _god_ it felt nice to be held, to feel in the here, to feel something tangible to grab onto, something as solid as skin and lungs and heart, something that wouldn’t leave in the blink of an eye, in a flash.

“I got you,” Wally whispers into her hair, and Iris is still shaking, but she loosens her grip a little bit, enough to let him pull her to the couch, enough for him to wipe the tears off her cheeks and give her a smile, one that she _almost_ returns. 

He’s still rubbing her arms and she’s still catching her breath. The silence stretches on between them, and Iris likes that Wally doesn’t push, that he lets her take her time to talk, that he’s here to listen to her, not to make her listen to him. 

“Iris…” he says, tilting her head to meet his eyes, “I’m here.” 

She sighs, steadies her trembling hands, closes her eyes shut before exhaling loudly.

She could offer him something to eat, should probably offer him something to drink, but she’s too tired to do it, too tired to say anything because every time she says something, she feels the overwhelming urge to cry again, because she’s afraid her words will betray her, will betray the strength she always puts on. 

Wally doesn’t seem to mind, not by the way he keeps watching her, his eyes following her movements. 

“Sorry,” and maybe she’s apologizing because she’s his older sister and she’s got some reputation to keep or maybe she’s apologizing because she’s got his shirt wet, the same shirt they bought together last year, when they were figuring things out between them. 

The material was as soft as she remembered it to be, a reason why she picked it out for him. It was nice that he wore it. 

He shakes his head. “I’m here, sis.”

Another moment of silence passes.

“How’s dad?” she finally says, settling on the question. “Okay. Adjusting.”

“Is he eating enough?” Wally nods.

“Sleeping?”

“He’s okay, Iris.”

“Okay,” she says, dropping her head, playing with her fingers.

“Are you?”

She doesn’t look up, swallows a sob that’s already forming in her throat. “You remember what I do, right?”

“What?” 

Iris doesn’t blame him for the surprise in his voice, for the way he looks at her with confusion. Maybe he hadn’t thought of all the millions of questions that were constantly running through her head. Or maybe he did and just pushed them aside, for fear of doing to himself what she was doing to herself. For doubting the realness of anything and everything, for hating time travel. 

“All those talks...all those things...all those places you and I went to...all those still happened right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says hurriedly, the expression on his face still the same, “of course.” 

“When we went to see mom together,” she pushes because she needs this, “when we stayed up all night in her hospital room talking, the night you forgave her...that happened, right?”

“It did.”

“Okay.”

“Why are you asking?” he asks.

“Lately things haven’t felt…” she pauses, trying to put it into words, “I dunno...real I guess.”

“Because of what Barry did?”

And it’s the first time she’s heard his name said out loud in a month. She hasn’t said his name, the thought of it bringing her too many emotions, too many thoughts she can’t process, so she avoids his name like it’s her only lifeline.

“Time travel is weird,” she manages to choke out.

“It is,” Wally laughs, and that’s a nice sound, another sound she hasn’t heard in awhile.

Outside, there’s a car alarm that goes off, and it jolts her out of the silence. She realizes she hasn’t been paying attention to much lately. Usually, she’ll go for a way around her neighborhood, say hi to a few of the neighbors who live on her floor, but she hasn’t found the heart, doesn’t want to make any new memory for fear of not remembering it. And maybe it’s irrational, maybe she’s overcompensating, because she knows logically that this isn’t how life works, this isn’t how to live it.

Still.

“Iris?” Wally’s voice brings her back to him. He takes both her hands in his. “Talk to me.”

“Why’d you forgive mom?”

“I love her,” he says simply, and it’s a good enough answer for her, the answer she knows is the only answer for most things. She lets him continue. 

“She made a mistake. But she’s my mom. And it wasn’t easy for her.”

Iris nods.

“Why’d you forgive dad?” Wally asks, the question throwing her off guard.

“For what?”

“Lying to you about Barry.” 

She lets go of her brother’s hands, bringing her own to rub her temples. “It’s different, Wally.”

“You still forgave him,” Wally pushes, and he’s doing this with a good heart and good intentions, and she knows he’s right, because she did forgive, it’s in her bones to forgive, it’s who she is. 

Iris. The one who sees the best in people. The one whose empathy extends countries. The one who can be so selfless, to a point of losing sight of herself sometimes. “I got my point across,” she finally says, “same with Barry.”

“And now?”

“For dad or Barry?” she asks, her lips curving upwards, the fact that she even has to ask the question making the mood a little lighter.

“Let’s do dad first.”

“He hid that from me for more than 20 years.”

“Mom did too.”

“It’s different…” Iris defends, “he’s done it before...about Barry. It felt like everything I told him about telling me the truth went in one ear and out the other.” 

“But he told you.”

“Only because he had to.”

“It’s been a year.”

It _has_ been a year. And somehow she’s managed to lose track of that this past month. It got easier, resisting walking to Joe’s house, driving there for dinner, like she’d do, working there on an article, having him look over it sometimes. She got used to the fact that it had been Wally, Barry and Joe, reminding herself that she chose this, that she couldn’t face that house and her dad just yet. 

It was time though. She’d been working up to it, probably needed to talk to someone to make it more real, but she was ready to do it. 

“I think he can wait a few more days.”

Her brother perks up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” her eyes twinkle, “thinking about it is bringing me back to the same answer every time.”

“Good.”

“Good,” she repeats.

“And Barry...?” Wally asks.

Barry. Barry was something else, a whole different thing that she hadn’t fully processed yet. Maybe because what he did was new, something she was still trying to understand, something that hurt too much to think about so she didn’t if she could help it.

It was hard to not feel good enough. Why he left her, why he couldn’t depend on her to guide him through it, to him in her arms like she did before.

She understood why he did it, in part. But she didn’t understand his impulse that he almost did it again when he ran away from her, like he hadn’t learned that facing her was easier than fixing things, because it was okay if things weren’t always perfect. 

“Eddie died.”

Wally exhales.

The faucet drips.

She inhales.

“He killed himself. To save Barry’s life.”

And now the tears are back in her eyes, because she’s moved on from that, largely alone, processing the grief between moments where she wasn’t thinking about her mom or her dad or researching her brother, but now it seems like all of that was lost, because he didn’t _have_ to die, shouldn’t have died if the same thing would just happen again anyway.

“And how do I…” she stops. Wally pulls her back to his chest.

Tears didn’t run out. Maybe she would ask Barry about why someday. But her tears seemed to aggregate in an instance, sometimes at work, sometimes in the car, sometimes during dinner, and she willed them away usually, forced them back, but it got to be too much right now.

“It’s okay,” her brother goes back to doing the same thing he did when he first came inside, and she’s smelling his shirt again, and the fabric still feels just as soft, so that’s helping, because it’s warm and he’s still here, hasn’t disappeared out of her reach, and god does it feel good to have someone to hold.

“...and things I did,” she says between sobs, “things I don’t remember...kisses I don’t remember, conversations that never happened, a me that doesn’t know any of this!” 

She fell asleep at some point during their talk. When morning came, Iris found herself covered with a blanket, a pillow propped under her head on the couch, with a note on the table that read _I’m_ _picking you up after class. Be ready. Love you._ She took her time to get ready that day.

Took it slow. One step at a time, one breath at a time.

And she forgave her dad. She went back home, stayed the night a few times, learned to talk to him again, learned to hold him and hug him and touch him, learned to love him, to trust him, told him he had to tell her, and he did. 

They’d visit Francine sometimes, her, Wally and Joe. They did it twice, both times reminding her she still had a home, that family wasn’t something she imagined, that things would get easier, with time, with work, but that it was okay. 

She still avoided Barry.

Two months. Three months. It was almost four months.

There was a growing hole in her chest, the same one that was there when he was in a coma and she couldn’t bring him back to her. Except this time she could, physically, but mentally _it_ _hurt_ , so much, it was a lot to process, a lot to take in.

And it wasn’t like this was intentional on his part. He made a mistake. A mistake. But a mistake that kept her mom alive, so that was good. A mistake that let him get his parents back, and he needed that, needed their embrace, something that he’d missed out on so much of his life, so that was also good.

It wasn’t all bad. It was just a lot.

But one day she saw him walking up the stairs of CCPD, and for the first time, Iris didn’t turn the other way. She held his gaze.

They talked. A small conversation just to check in.

The next week, she visited her dad’s and Barry was there, but she didn’t leave. She even sat next to him on the couch. 

And today, he was supposed to come over. To visit her again for the first time in four months, ever since the night he told her what happened.

She heard a knock on her door.

She hadn’t bothered cleaning up, the takeout boxes still on the table. She’d been working a lot, her deadlines coming too fast to meet sometimes. Ever since her promotion, it was harder to make time for life outside of work, but that wasn’t always a bad thing.

But she finished just in time for him. 

And she pulled him into a hug, reveling in his touch, holding him tight because she’d missed him a lot, missed his warmth and his love and missed all of him, so she pushed herself into him, and she felt him holding her close, felt his lips on her neck, felt his hands on her back, and they would talk eventually.

She’d ask him if he was hungry first. He’d take off his coat first.

They’d talk.

But right now, holding him was enough.


End file.
